


my heart's an autoclave

by unicornpoe



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Domestic, Fluff, Kissing, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Recreational Drug Use, Trick or Treating, surprise! it's tender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:22:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27294880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicornpoe/pseuds/unicornpoe
Summary: It would be so easy, Eddie thinks, to sit down in Richie’s lap, to wrap his arms around his shoulders, to kiss the stunned-soft shape of his mouth and the sleep-flush still lingering beneath the surface of his skin. It would be so easy. And Richie would let him.Eddie can’t make himself do it.*Richie loves Eddie. Eddie loves Richie. Some day, one of them will do something about it.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 41
Kudos: 449





	my heart's an autoclave

**Author's Note:**

> hello! i busted this bad boy out in a day and gave it the most cursory of skims, so, read with that in mind. 
> 
> CWs/TWs: a brief scene of smokin' the devil's lettuce, lite mentions of sonia, myra, and bev's ex husband
> 
> happy halloween if that's your jam, and enjoy :)

This is what happens: 

“I just think purple hair is an avenue of self-expression you haven’t explored yet,” Richie says, “and I also think it would compliment your rockin’ bod and darlin’ face.”

Eddie, sitting at the kitchen table, thinks about how he would throw this knife in his hand at Richie’s head if it wasn’t sure to hurt him. Eddie wants to convey his rage and horror, he doesn’t want to  _ hurt  _ him. “I’m enraged and horrified by you,” Eddie says, and wedges the knife into the tender white side of an onion before pressing down hard, hearing the  _ snick  _ of it coming through to the cutting board on the other side. “And purple washes me out.”

Richie unburies himself from beneath the counter where he’s been searching for their soup pot with a victorious little  _ aha.  _ He sets the pot on the stove with a clatter. “Well I look fabulous in purple,” he says. “Maybe  _ I’ll  _ go for it.”

He tosses a little grin at Eddie over his shoulder, bright and crooked and utterly ridiculous. 

Eddie’s chest goes warm at that, the way it always does when Richie gives him that particular smile. He frowns harder. 

“Fine,” Eddie mutters. “Don’t come crying to me when all your hair falls out and you go bald prematurely, then. Or you have a reaction to the bleach and you get, like, a disgusting rash. Or you mix up the purple for orange.”

“The last one,” Richie says. “The last one would be a travesty, orange makes me look like a nightmare.” 

Eddie grabs another onion, unpeels it with careful fingers. There’s a bit of onion skin stuck under his fingernails: he wiggles it out with the edge of his thumb. “You always look like a nightmare,” he says. 

“Oh baby you’re so good to me,” Richie sings. Eddie can feel the force of that grin on the side of his face—he knows that when he looks up Richie will be smiling so wide that there are lines at the sides of his eyes and mouth, that his crooked front teeth are showing, that his cheeks are a little pink with the combination of that and the bread baking in the oven heat. Eddie doesn’t look up. “How’re those onions coming, Eds?”

Eddie stands instead of answering, circumnavigating Richie in the middle of the kitchen to drop the onions he’s sliced into the bottom of the soup pot. They hit the butter Richie’s been browning with a sizzle, already lifting the kitchen with a smell that makes Eddie’s stomach growl.

“And anyway,” says Eddie, moving to the sink to wash his hands. He has to hip-check Richie out of the way to reach the soap: he likes to press himself up into Eddie’s space even though the size of this kitchen isn’t anything to be ashamed of, and now he’s a long firm line of heat against Eddie’s left side while Eddie is just trying to practice some basic fucking personal hygiene. “I’ve slowed down a bit on the self-expression. No need to exhaust all my options before I’m fifty.”

By normal human standards Eddie probably hasn’t branched out all that far in the intervening year-and-a-bit since being skewered by a clown and then coming out to all his closest friends while on enough drugs to tranquilize a horse and  _ then  _ divorcing his wife over text like a coward—but he’s kind of proud of himself anyway. He eats almost whatever he wants now, and on the weekends he really lets loose. He asked for a promotion as well as a transfer and he fucking got it. And technically Richie is the one who asked Eddie to move in, but Eddie said  _ yes,  _ which is the main thing. 

So yeah. Eddie Kaspbrak is fucking proud of his self-expression levels. His therapist says he should be, and he tries to listen to her. 

“Hey  _ hey,  _ did you hear that, ladies? Handsome  _ and  _ smart.” Richie gives the onions a stir, adds garlic, white wine, stock, spices. He’s a good cook. Eddie sits back down at the table and watches the way Richie moves his tall form around their kitchen with ease. “A fucking catch. The catch of the day. Hey, we haven’t had fish in a while, have we, Eds?”

Eddie smiles at his turned back. Lets himself be as soft about it as he wants to be, since Richie can’t see him. 

“No,” he says. “Not since Bev and Ben came up a couple weeks ago. You made salmon.”

Richie snaps the fingers of his free hand and points over his shoulder at Eddie without looking. “Right you are,” he says. “Oh, I was supposed to send Ben that recipe…”

This is what happens: 

It's reckless of Eddie, but he does it anyway. He sits back in his chair and smiles at Richie, and his stupid apron with two frogs holding hands on it that Patty bought him, and his curly hair grown long enough that Eddie makes him push it back with a headband when he cooks so he doesn’t shed into the food, and his terrible broad shoulders and big hands and sturdy forearms and his fucking crinkly smile. 

This is how it happens: 

_ I fucking love you, _ Eddie thinks, and is very glad that he isn’t holding a knife anymore. 

*

The first night Eddie moved in with Richie, Richie sat on Eddie’s bed and said stupid shit to him and laughed at things that weren’t really funny and showed him memes that Eddie didn’t understand until Eddie was laughing, too, out of sheer tiredness, out of sheer relief. 

Richie had been slumped against Eddie, the top of his head pressed into Eddie’s bicep. He’d tilted his chin up to smile directly into Eddie’s eyes then, a soft and musing sort of smile, and then he’d said, “I love you.”

Eddie had stopped laughing quite quickly. He could taste his heartbeat in his throat at that moment. It throbbed like a bruise. 

“Like I mean.” Richie had stopped. Swallowed tightly. “I’m in love with you.”

“Oh,” Eddie had said, and then, “are you for real?”

That hadn’t been what he’d wanted to say. That hadn’t been it at all—only his tongue was swollen and clumsy in his suddenly-dry mouth, and all he could think was  _ why, why, why.  _

And when Eddie had looked at him then—really  _ looked  _ at him, no distractions in the form of tweets and bad jokes and videos of people mouthing along to songs—Eddie had seen it. Something bittersweet and sad behind those eyes. An ache to the edge of his smile. 

“As real as you are, Spaghetti,” Richie had murmured. He still hadn’t sat up. “I just thought I should let you know.”

Maybe Eddie had been quiet too long. Richie has never been one to handle silence well. 

“I get it if you want to move out,” Richie had said. The smile was dimming the longer Eddie gaped down at him, but there wasn’t anything Eddie could do about it.  _ Why, why, why.  _ “I won’t—I won’t be mad or anything. I mean, I’ll understand. Completely.”

“No,” Eddie said, perhaps too sharply. “No, asshole, I don’t want to fucking move, I just—shit. Do you want  _ me  _ to move?”

And Richie had said “No, Eds,” soft, like it was crazy Eddie would even think that, and then he’d sat up. Eddie had missed the weight of him instantly. “I don’t want that at all. I just thought I should tell you. Now let's please not talk about it again, ok?”

“Ok,” Eddie had said. It’s been a year since that conversation. They’ve never spoken of it again. 

That doesn’t mean Eddie doesn’t see it. He does. That half-sweet longing in the tilt of Richie’s smile when they’re tangled on the couch together watching a movie. The way he looks when Eddie laughs, looks like he’s drinking him up before Eddie catches him and he glances away. 

Only now Eddie  _ gets it.  _

Only now Eddie’s looking back. 

*

“Bev,” says Eddie that night, curled on his side under the covers like a kid. He’s pressing his phone so tightly to his ear that he knows his skin will be glowing pink when he takes it away. He doesn’t care. “Beverly on a scale from one to ten how likely do you think it is that I’ve been in love with Richie since I was eleven fucking years old and I just realized the word for it this evening?”

“Shit,” Bev says. “Are we doing this? I guess we’re doing this.”

“Number, please,” Eddie says. His heart hasn’t stopped racing. It hadn’t stopped all through dinner, all through the two and a half episodes of  _ Supernanny _ they’d watched before bed, all through Richie taking four minutes to tell Eddie a joke because he’d been laughing too hard to get it out. 

That last one had nearly made Eddie stride across their small bathroom and kiss him right then and there. 

“Ok,” says Beverly. “Babe you know I love you, but I think I’m gonna have to give you a nine.” 

Eddie groans. 

“I left some wiggle room,” she admits shamefully. “I would’ve said ten if you weren’t a risk analyst.” 

“Oh god,” Eddie moans, closing his eyes tight. He’s blushing, hot with embarrassment even though there’s no one here to see him. “God, Beverly, I’m such a fucking idiot.”

“Hey,” she says, “Hey, no, Eddie.”

“I am!” Eddie snaps it and then immediately feels bad. It’s not her fault for trying to reassure him. “Sorry. I’m just. Did you know—he fucking told me he loved he a year ago, Bev. I’ve known for a year. And I’m only just realizing I feel the same fucking way?” He bats the covers off of himself suddenly; it’s gotten too humid down here. “I’m an  _ idiot. _ ”

“You’re not an idiot,” she says softly. “You just weren’t ready.”

Eddie stares up at his bedroom ceiling; at the stain in the plaster that’s been here longer than he has. Longer than Richie has, probably. This house isn’t new. They don’t know everything about it yet. 

“But you were ready,” Eddie says, and then he can’t say anything else. 

Bev makes a noise on the other end of the line, something careful, something considering. This is just one of the reasons Eddie loves her. She understands. 

“It was different, Eddie,” she says, and he knows it’s true. Bev had been married to Tom in nothing but name by the time she left him, and Ben had been there if she wanted him, as quiet and patient and calm as always. Eddie had ripped himself away from Myra’s claws so forcefully they left scratches—and there is nothing quiet or calm about Richie. Eddie wouldn’t love him if there was. “Both of us were being controlled, but in different ways. Both of us have different recovery paths.”

Eddie closes his eyes again. His voice is small when he says, “Yours seems so fast.”

“I’m not done,” she says. “I’m not close to being done. But my steps are in a different order than your steps.”

“God, that is just.” Eddie takes in a deep breath, and it hitches in the middle, but his eyes stay dry. “Devastatingly rational.”

She laughs in that way of hers. Not at him but with him. “I love you, Eddie,” she says. 

“Love you too, sweety,” he murmurs. The headache he’s had since dinner is still there, but it’s easing. “Thanks for letting me rant.”

“Anytime,” Beverly says. “And for what it’s worth—I’m happy for you.”

Oh, he can’t handle that right now. “Bye,” he says, a little strangled, and lets his phone fall to the mattress. 

Holy  _ fuck.  _

*

The thing about realizing he’s been in love with Richie for thirty years is that Eddie just wants to…  _ be with him  _ now. Like, all the time. 

It’s becoming a problem.

“Hey Eds,” Richie says in the morning a few days later, smiling up at Eddie. “Not that I don’t love spending time with you, but aren’t you gonna be late for work?”

Eddie’s sitting on the edge of Richie’s desk as he writes, reading an article on his phone infuriating enough to give him a migraine. He closes it. Meets Richie’s eyes. 

“Uh, I guess,” he says. He wills himself not to turn red. He always turns red when he feels like he’s being caught out, as bright and ugly as a tomato. 

Richie’s eyebrows lift. He’s smiling slightly, turned toward Eddie, but there’s concern in that gaze. For a moment Eddie wishes he wasn’t so damn caring, but shuts that shit down fast. “Right,” Richie says slowly. “That’s… probably not good?”

Eddie swallows tightly. This was definitely a stupid idea—it’s just, he’d woken up this morning and honestly couldn’t think of a thing he’d like to do less than leave Richie’s side. And in a fit of misguided self-expression, he’d just followed Richie to his office and planted himself down. 

Fucking self-expression.

“No,” says Eddie, slipping down off the desk. His socked feet land lightly on the floor. “No, it’s totally not good, I’m just, I was… I just miss you sometimes. Is the thing.”

Christ. He didn’t mean to say that, even if it’s completely true. He  _ misses  _ Richie when he’s not with him, in a way that’s so different to how he felt about Myra—how he would seek out longer shifts at work just to get away from Myra—that it almost gives Eddie vertigo. Eddie lingers as long as he can in the mornings, he rushes home as soon as his day is over; he calls Richie over lunch, and sometimes slips away to the bathroom to call him again. He  _ misses  _ Richie. 

Richie’s eyes have gone wide behind his glasses, round and soft. Eddie can feel that gaze like a touch. 

“Oh,” says Richie quietly. It would be so easy, Eddie thinks, to sit down in Richie’s lap, to wrap his arms around his shoulders, to kiss the stunned-soft shape of his mouth and the sleep-flush still lingering beneath the surface of his skin. It would be so easy. And Richie would let him. 

Eddie can’t make himself do it. 

“Do you wanna…” Richie hesitates, gaze flicking over Eddie’s face like sunlight. “I could stop by on your lunch break. We could go eat together.”

Eddie’s turn to be surprised, although really he shouldn’t be. There is that warmth again, growing like a flame between his ribs. “If you want to,” he says, awkward as he’s always been. He thinks  _ yes, yes, yes,  _ and knows he’s probably frowning anyway. 

Still, Richie smiles. “Ok,” he says happily. 

“Ok,” Eddie repeats. He wants to bend down and kiss Richie’s cheek, so he just squeezes his wrist instead, gentle where it’s resting on the arm of Richie’s chair. “See you then, Rich.”

“Have a good day, dear,” Richie says, and Eddie lets them both pretend it’s a joke. 

The first half of the day drags. 

Not that days as a risk analyst are ever particularly thrilling—even if Eddie  _ does _ like his job, the precision of it, the formulaic predictability—but this morning seems to creep by with agonizing slowness. 

He almost texts Richie at his desk an embarrassing number of times. Finally he tucks his phone away in a drawer beneath a stack of papers he hasn’t looked at in three months and forces himself to concentrate until the clock hits eleven forty-five. 

And then he’s out of there. 

Chicago in the last days of October is cold as shit and that, coupled with how windy it is today, means Richie is standing tucked up against the side of Eddie’s building when Eddie gets out, his coat zipped up to his chin and his hands shoved deep in his pockets. 

He beams when he sees Eddie. Crosses the last few feet between them with bounding steps and grabs Eddie’s arm, pulls him in close so they’re pressed together shoulder-to-shoulder, hip-to-hip. “It is fucking  _ blustery _ !” Richie says with relish. 

“Mmhm,” Eddie hums. His heart started pounding the moment their eyes met across the courtyard and he can still feel it, thrumming in his palms and his throat and his jaw. He wants to turn halfway and fold himself into the front of Richie’s chest. Wants to tuck his nose into the space between Richie’s shoulder and his neck and breathe him in. 

“You care where we go, Eds?” Richie asks. Their elbows are hooked together but Richie has Eddie’s hand covered with his anyway, as if that one point of contact wasn’t enough. “Any requests?”

“Somewhere with a fucking heater,” Eddie says.

Richie laughs. Eddie feels the movement of it against his side, the vibrations, the shift of Richie’s ribs.  _ Kill me,  _ Eddie thinks,  _ just kill me now—  _

They duck into the pizza place half a block down, and Eddie feels himself relax a little as the heat hits him like a wall. He’s never liked to be cold and he isn’t now; he keeps Richie close as they’re led to a table anyway. 

They don’t have to discuss their order before Eddie puts it in—they’ve split enough pizzas in the last year that it’s instinct at this point. 

He feels Richie’s gaze on him as he orders though. Smiling like it’s something special that Eddie knows what he wants. 

When Eddie glances at him Richie’s eyes are crinkled happily behind his glasses. He takes a sip of the rootbeer he ordered because he’s a child and grins at Eddie. “So. Miss me?”

“No,” says Eddie. “I was being held at gunpoint this morning and forced to say things against my will. You couldn’t see the gun because you’re blind.”

Richie kicks his ankle beneath the table, and then doesn’t pull his legs away. Just leaves them tangled up together. An absolutely wild move. “Aw, Eds,” he says sweetly, resting his chin in his hand like he used to as a kid and unfortunately looking just as cute now as he did then, although Eddie really  _ would _ have to be held at gunpoint to admit that. “You’d rather be nice to me than get shot?”

If Eddie wasn’t stupid and had gotten his shit together a year ago, he’d be allowed to reach across the table and take Richie’s hand for that. Goddamnit. “I’m nice to you all the time, fucknugget,” he says. 

Somebody at the table over shoots them a nasty look, and Richie laughs.  _ Oh god,  _ Eddie thinks.  _ I’d like to eat him alive.  _

“Yeah, you are,” Richie says. He shifts his legs slightly, and Eddie thinks he’s trying to pull away—but no. He rubs their ankles together a little, skin against skin. He is the weirdest man Eddie has ever met, and Eddie’s embarrassingly into it. “Good to me. Eddie my love.”

It lights Eddie up like a firecracker, hearing shit like that now. He takes a long drink of ice water to calm the fuck down. 

Richie has moved onto other topics by the time their food arrives, babbling softly and mostly without the need for input from Eddie. He’s good at that. Talking to fill the silence, stringing together sentences that Eddie can laugh with or scoff at or tuck into his pockets to think about later when they hit close to his core. 

“Trick-or-treat is tomorrow, you know,” Richie says now. He takes a bite in the middle of his sentence. Eddie frowns at him, but can’t quite muster up his usual amount of displeased force. “And, like, I know we didn’t really do anything last year because you’d just moved in and we were learning how to cohabitate or whatever, but.” He shrugs. It’s noticeable that he isn’t looking at Eddie only because he always is. “We’re pretty well-adjusted now, I think, so we could hand out candy or something. If you want.”

Richie is extremely terrible at being subtle. Eddie wants to laugh, but keeps the urge in check. “Richie,” he says. “Do  _ you  _ want to hand out candy?”

“Well,” Richie says. He peels off a piece of pepperoni and eats it with his fingers, which is also objectively disgusting, but Eddie can’t dredge up even one sliver of annoyance. God, he’s in trouble. “I can’t imagine you’d like staying up while a bunch of people we don’t know ring our doorbell, so if you don’t want to I don’t want to, Eds, and I’ve really got no problem with it.” Another shrug. He smiles this time. “But I think it’s kinda fun. I like seeing people’s costumes.”

Eddie loves him. Eddie loves him. He feels suddenly breathless with it, like there’s no room for anything else in his body but these feelings which swell up like balloons. 

_ I will hand out candy with you until I die,  _ he thinks. “I’ve never done anything trick-or-treat-related,” he says, and wishes to impale himself with his fork. 

“No shit!” says Richie loudly, earning their table another disgruntled glare. He grimaces, and leans in close to Eddie on his elbows. “Not even handed anything out?”

Eddie shakes his head. Sonia had never let him trick-or-treat with the rest of the Losers—said he’d find razor blades in his candy, said that he was allergic to most of it and the rest of it was probably poisoned—and Myra had disliked kids strongly enough that she didn’t even want them coming up to their porch. Eddie’s never really felt much about it one way or another, but now, seeing the enthusiasm Richie exudes, it sounds like the very best way to spend an evening. 

“Let’s do it,” he says suddenly. Any apprehension he might have felt clears away when Richie grins at him. 

“Oh Spaghetti, this shall be your greatest Halloween yet,” Richie declares. He squeezes Eddie’s ankle between both of his and Eddie rolls his eyes lightly, smiling just because. “Mine too.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure this’ll beat any party you’ve ever gone to,” Eddie laughs. “Sitting on the front steps with me in the freezing cold.”

“You weren’t at the parties,” Richie says. He tips his head. “So this’ll be better.”

*

Richie carried him out of Neibolt. 

Eddie tends to get a bit fixated on this if he thinks about it too frequently. Eddie was punctured, and Richie picked him up, and Richie held him all the way to the hospital, letting Eddie bleed on him, not letting Eddie die. 

Richie held him in his arms. 

Neither of them have ever talked about it. Mike told Eddie after: told Eddie how Richie had been sobbing too hard to breathe in the waiting room, and a doctor had had to sedate him, too. Told Eddie how as soon as Richie woke up he fought his way into Eddie’s room and held his hand and didn’t sleep or eat for nearly two days. 

Eddie’s blood had been all over him, Mike said. Under his fingernails, in the cracks of his palms. 

It’s the evening before Halloween. They sit on their screened-in back porch on the same glider, a blanket tossed over their laps, while Richie smokes a joint and Eddie breathes it—him—in. 

Sometimes, in the cold, the scar across Eddie’s chest goes taut and achy. It’s an ugly cord of a thing: dead-white and twisted, tendrils reaching. He takes in another breath and it hitches into a gasp. 

“Hey,” Richie murmurs. He turns to him, eyes dark with worry. “Eddie. Ok?” 

“Sorry,” Eddie says. His palm is pressed over his chest, and he doesn’t remember lifting it there. “Sorry, just.”

He doesn’t finish his sentence, but Richie seems to get it. He hands Eddie what’s left of the joint and Eddie takes a pull, smoke filling his lungs, thinking  _ brave, brave  _ when Richie nudges Eddie’s hand aside and replaces it with his own. 

Richie’s touches are gentle, but firm. He knows just the way: just the way to cup his palm over Eddie’s heart, to rub in careful circles, imbuing heat into Eddie’s skin through the fabric of whichever of Richie’s sweatshirts he’s wearing tonight. 

“There you go,” Richie murmurs. His hands are warm. He’s the only other person who has ever touched Eddie’s scar, and Eddie thinks that fact alone should have clued them both in. “Just breathe.”

“Sorry,” Eddie says again. He takes another hit because he’ll kiss Richie if he doesn’t, he’ll bend his head and find his mouth if there isn’t something to distract him, he will take Richie’s breath into his lungs and never come back up. “Gets achy in the cold.”

Richie hums. He slips his other arm around Eddie’s shoulders, his big palm covering the point of Eddie’s knobby shoulder on the other side. God, he’s big. Eddie could bury himself in Richie if he tried hard enough. “Need to head inside?”

“No,” Eddie says, too fast. He’s holding the wrist of the hand Richie’s covering his chest with, fingers not quite meeting around either side. He doesn’t remember moving. “No, just…”

Richie hums again. Leaves his hands where they are. Rests his chin on the top of Eddie’s head. 

Eddie dozes a little, warm now that Richie’s curled around him like a giant housecat, skin singing in the places they touch. His thoughts swim slowly in his mind, and every now and then one makes him smile: Richie loves him. He loves Richie. Someday, one of them will do something about it. 

“Rich,” he mumbles some amount of time later. The sun is nearly set; he watches the burnt-orange sunset through half-lidded eyes, not willing to shift himself out of Richie’s arms to see it fully. “Why didn’t you tell me you carried me out of Neibolt?”

He didn’t realize he was going to ask that. It just slipped out, fully formed, where it hangs in the air before them. 

One of Richie’s arms tightens around Eddie. It feels subconscious, involuntary, like just the mention of that day makes Richie need to hold him closer. 

Maybe it’s the weed, or the fact that he’s half-awake, or a combination of a few things—but Eddie’s eyes go hot and damp. He squeezes Richie’s wrist softly. 

“Well, Eds,” Richie says after a while. His voice is low and carries a slight rasp, and Eddie feels the vibrations of Richie’s throat against his cheek. “I dunno. I… didn’t wanna brag.”

Eddie laughs. It isn’t funny, not really, but just—the fact that he can kind of see that being true is enough to make him chuckle. He pokes Richie’s stomach. Murmurs, “Dickhead.”

“Asshole,” Richie responds swiftly. He giggles a little, the quiet sort of giggle that nobody but Eddie ever gets to hear. Not even when they were kids. That means something, too. Richie sighs, and Eddie feels him sober. “I didn’t think you’d like to talk about it,” he says at last. 

Eddie could lift his face and kiss the pulse in Richie’s neck. He doesn’t. “I just…” he smooths his fingertips over the soft skin at the inside of Richie’s wrist. “I never thanked you.”

“Oh,” Richie says. “Eds. You don’t have to thank me.”

“I want to,” Eddie says. 

He feels, more than hears, Richie swallow. He wonders if he’s smiling. He wonders if he’s closed his eyes.

“Ok, Eddie Spaghetti,” Richie says, voice small. “If you want to.”

“I do.” Eddie struggles to sitting up. He doesn’t want to remove himself from the cage of Richie’s arms, but Richie knowing he means it is more important than Eddie soaking up the last bit of his warmth, and Eddie needs to look him in the eyes while he says this. He places his hand on Richie’s shoulder, thumb lined up with the edge of his shirt collar. “Thank you, Richie. You saved my life.”

Richie’s smile trembles. Eddie loves him. “Any of them would have,” he says. 

“I know,” Eddie says, and he does. Any of them would save each other, over and over and over again. “But you did.”

“Eddie,” Richie murmurs. 

“I know,” Eddie says again. He does. He does. 

He slips his arms around Richie’s neck, brings his head down to rest in the cradle of Eddie’s shoulder. He holds him like that for a long time. 

*

“Please go straight right the fuck down to hell,” Eddie says. 

Richie, sitting below him on the front steps, laughs so hard Eddie watches him wipe tears away from his glasses. “Eddie!” he gasps, mock-scandalized, and pelts a piece of candy at him where it lands ineffectually at his feet. “Don’t say shit like that! Think of the children!”

“There aren’t any children here yet, dickhead,” Eddie says, and kicks the candy back at him. Richie picks it up, peels open the wrapper, and pops it in his mouth. Hooligan. “I am  _ not  _ wearing this.”

“You put it  _ on,  _ is the thing,” Richie says. He’s smiling. He’s fucking beaming. Eddie feels shivery and strange inside, like he’s one second from either throwing himself down at Richie’s feet to kiss his face or strangle him. “Which is a terrible way to go about not wearing something, Eddie my love.” 

“I hate you,” Eddie says, lying, lying, and stomps across the porch to sit down heavily next to him. Their thighs are pressed together. “Give me one of those tiny fucking Hershey bars.”

Richie does. Their fingers brush, and Eddie doesn’t focus on that because he isn’t in goddamn middle school. 

“I think you look ravishing,” Richie coos. His long fingers pluck at the sweater Eddie’s wearing, pulling the fabric out so he can really appreciate the garish orange color and the leering jack o'lantern face etched out in black sequins on the front. “Like a little model.”

“I’m not little,” Eddie says automatically. He doesn’t bat Richie’s hand away, and when it falls to rest on his thigh, he doesn’t say anything. 

“But you  _ are  _ a model?” Richie gasps loudly. He’s in quite the mood tonight. “Eddie Spaghetti are you leading a secret double life? A second life full of high-fashion? Oh my god, do you have a second family I don’t know about?”

Eddie lets him run his mouth, pretending to be much more annoyed than he actually is. But that’s what he’s always done, isn’t it? Pretended like Richie was driving him crazy just to keep him talking. Pushed and shoved at Richie just to get him to push and shove back, just to get Richie’s hands on him. 

Jesus fucking Christ, Eddie’s stupid. 

“No secret double life,” Eddie says, patting Richie’s knee absently. “Just you.”

And he didn’t mean it like that—really, he didn’t—but when Richie goes quiet and looks at him, eyes wide, lips a little parted, Eddie decides he isn’t going to take it back. 

“Huh,” says Richie after a moment. He sounds slightly breathless. 

Eddie shrugs. It’s true. His life is right here, with Richie. And there’s nothing secretive about it. 

The first round of kids comes up the sidewalk then—a couple of ghosts, a girl dressed like David Bowie, a princess, Mario but no Luigi—and Richie smiles at them, sweet and kind, and Eddie watches with a hitch in his throat as he makes sure each kid gets a good handful of candy and leaves with a grin. He’s fucking good with kids. Watching him compliment a baby’s Totaro onesie, visible from the shelter of their mother’s arms, feels like Eddie’s willingly blinding himself. 

Eddie wants to crisis-call Bev. He scoots closer to Richie instead, elbows knocking elbows, hands knocking hands as they reach into the bucket on the ground between them. 

It’s nice. It’s one of those small, domestic things that Eddie thought he was indifferent to but now realizes he wants with an almost desperate fervor as long as the right person is around. It’s one of those things that he wants with  _ Richie.  _ This is their neighborhood, their house, their front porch: soon, they will head inside, and one of them will heat up leftovers for dinner, and one of them will set the table, and they’ll watch shitty horror movies until Richie falls asleep on Eddie’s shoulder. 

It’s a strange thing, to realize you have almost everything you’ve ever wanted. 

Almost. Because there’s one last thing. 

The best thing. And maybe, Eddie thinks, the easiest.

*

“Oh yum yum circus peanuts,” Richie says. 

He’s stretched out on the couch, feet in Eddie’s lap, head on the armrest. He tosses a circus peanut in the air and catches it in his mouth as Eddie looks on, grinning after he’s done. 

“You are so goddamn weird,” Eddie says. It’s shockingly fond of him. He has a hand curled around one of Richie’s ankles and he squeezes gently, just to dig his own grave a little further. “That is absolutely the worst food you could ever put in your mouth, hands down.”

“Yum yum,” Richie says, and pats his stomach. 

Eddie laughs despite himself. Helpless. He sighs when he’s done. “You’re a lost cause, aren't you?”

“Afraid so.” Richie pushes up his headband where it’s slid down his forehead, blinking up at Eddie. “Sorry, Eddie baby.”

Eddie brushes the knob of Richie’s ankle with a thumb. “That’s ok,” he says. “I like you like this.” 

The room shifts. 

The quiet between them is thick and slow. When Richie looks at him Eddie looks back, and Eddie watches him realize. 

“Eds,” Richie murmurs. He sits up, pulling his legs out of Eddie’s lap and crossing them in front of himself so he sits sideways on the couch. One of his knees hangs over the edge. 

Eddie reaches out slowly, giving Richie plenty of time to pull away if he wants to. 

Richie doesn’t. 

Eddie takes one of Richie’s broad hands in both of his. He skims his thumbs along the rough parts of Richie’s palm, traces the length of his fingers. “Richie,” he murmurs back. 

“I know I told you this last year,” Richie says. His breath shakes, but his voice doesn’t. “And after today, I promise I’ll never say it again if you don’t want me to. But Eddie, I… I love you so much.”

It’s different this time. Richie’s words sink into the place where Eddie can feel him smile, a soft-golden lick behind his ribs. 

Eddie can’t speak. Breath stopped up in his throat, he leans forward and cups Richie’s jaw in his hand, a thumb fitted down in the notch beneath his lips. Eddie leans in. Eddie kisses him. 

Richie makes a noise like he’s been hit, blunt and punched-out and wounded, and he slings one arm around Eddie’s waist and one around his neck as he kisses back. He hauls Eddie close, close, close—close enough that Eddie has to rise up on his knees to reach him. 

The shifted angle makes the kiss deeper, gives Eddie leverage to curl himself down around Richie’s upturned face and kiss past the soft envelope of his mouth, to lick along the velvet-warm line of his tongue. He kisses Richie, and he kisses him, and when Richie falls backwards to rest against the arm of the couch, Eddie follows him down. 

“Eds,” Richie rasps. His voice shakes now. There’s a flare of pride in Eddie’s gut, a flare of heat; he runs a hand up Richie’s soft stomach and his soft chest and his mouth meets it where he stops, bites at the tender skin stretched over his collar bone. Richie’s hand flies to his hair. Tangles itself in deep. “Oh, oh my god,  _ Eddie. _ ”

“I love you,” Eddie says. Saying it out loud breaks something open inside of him: he laughs into Richie’s flush-hot skin, breathy and wild. “I love you, I love you, Richie.”

Richie makes another of his wracked little sounds. Eddie lifts his head, hands sliding up to cradle Richie’s face; their eyes meet. 

Richie is dazed beneath them, his mouth kiss-pink, swollen lips parted. Chest rising and falling fast, he stares up at Eddie with wide, wet blue eyes. “ _ Eddie, _ ” he says again. His voice is thick. “Am I awake right now?”

“Of course you are,” Eddie says, and his voice is too tender, but that doesn’t matter anymore—it’s allowed to be, now. “I wouldn’t kiss you if you were asleep.”

Richie laughs, but he’s also still crying a little, and he’s still panting beneath Eddie’s hands. 

“Crybaby,” Eddie murmurs. He kisses one of Richie’s cheeks, and then the other. 

“Fuck,” Richie says unsteadily. “God, Eds, can you blame me?”

Eddie smiles at him. He kisses Richie again—he feels drunk with the ability to do that, feels like he’ll never be able to do anything  _ but  _ that—close-mouthed this time, right over his bottom lip. “No,” he admits softly. 

Richie’s hand is warm on the nape of his neck. He tugs Eddie down and Eddie goes willingly, fitting himself over Richie’s torso and between his long legs, head nestled carefully below his chin. 

“I love you,” Eddie says again. He won’t ever be able to stop saying it now that he’s started. The thought makes him smile. “I’m sorry I couldn’t say it until now.”

“Love you too, Eddie baby,” Richie whispers into his hair. “You said it just the right time.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! please come find me on twitter [@unicornpoe](https://twitter.com/unicornpoe) where i am all clown movie, all the time, and losing my mind about it


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